


A Swelling of the Ground

by xraelynn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e13 Irresistible (X-Files), Gen, Post-Episode: s02e13 Irresistible (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23655721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xraelynn/pseuds/xraelynn
Summary: It’s tradition for him to believe her when she tells him she’s fine. He needs to believe her because he needs her to be fine, because her fine fills his lungs when he draws breath. But now he summons the staggering fury he feels toward Donnie Pfaster and tries to channel it instead into grace for his partner.Post-"Irresistible" angst.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57
Collections: X-Files Angst Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	A Swelling of the Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neednot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/gifts).



When the officers break the door down, his heart pumps relief through his veins at the sight of Scully struggling with Donnie Pfaster. Only later will he realize that his relief mingles with the sharp edge of disappointment as Pfaster is led away in handcuffs.

Relief because Scully is alive. Disappointment because he doesn’t get to kill Donnie Pfaster with his bare hands.

* * *

It’s tradition for him to believe her when she tells him she’s fine. He needs to believe her because he needs her to be fine, because her fine fills his lungs when he draws breath. But now he summons the staggering fury he feels toward Donnie Pfaster and tries to channel it instead into grace for his partner.

Six months ago he stood alone on a mountaintop screaming her name into the empty sky, bargaining with whomever or whatever might be out there. _Send her back to me._ Six weeks ago he stormed into a hospital to demand justice, barely able to hear Margaret Scully’s placating voice over the thudding rage in his ears. Six hours ago he felt her life slipping through his fingers as if she had never been returned to him.

Now she stands in front of him more ghost than flesh, her chin quivering with the effort of pretending she isn’t there, inhabiting a body marred with pain and fear. 

“Mulder, I’m fine,” she says. He isn’t sure if she is lying to protect herself or to protect him.

He tips her chin up toward him with his hands. He has already decided not to believe her.

* * *

If it were up to him, no one would ever touch Scully again, gaze at her with hard eyes, even glance at a hair on her head, but Moe Bocks insists that Scully should visit the hospital. He glances at Scully, still shell-shocked and miserable, and he feels the powerlessness of the last six hours begin to drain away from him: This is something he can do for her. 

He trusts Agent Scully’s judgment, he tells Bocks, and right now Agent Scully deserves to go home. Bocks adopts an old-school gallancy as he flings open the front door to his car. Only Mulder detects Scully’s tiny flinch as Bocks sweeps off his own trenchcoat to lay across her lap. 

He watches her closely from the backseat as Bocks drives them toward the motel, loudly broadcasting his extensive knowledge of St. Paul lore to fill the silence in the vehicle. For two years Mulder has watched her hector special security forces and bring criminals to their knees with nothing more than the force of her intense gaze, but he has never seen her look so small. 

* * *

Scully has never felt so small. For years in medical school and months at the FBI academy she armed herself with the tools she would wield to survive: a scalpel, a gun, a healthy confidence in the scientific process. Her weapons have defended her against ridicule, against accusations, against criminals and madmen. 

But this year she has been powerless, not against the paranormal but against men. Men have wrested those weapons away from her, staking claims to her body and exposing its weaknesses.

In medical school, she had been fascinated by the vulnerabilities of the human body, how its frailties exposed death’s motives. No one in the Scully family had been bowled over by enthusiasm when Scully had announced her intention to specialize in forensic pathology.

“But Dana, you’d make such a wonderful pediatrician,” her mother had said.

“Anesthesiology is where the big bucks are,” Bill had said.

“You don’t think it’s...ghoulish?” Charlie had said.

But Melissa, of all people, who had shunned Scully’s devotion to science for most of their teenage lives, had seemed to understand that there was a spirituality inherent in the act of an autopsy, a ritual in guiding the dead from their lives to their graves. 

“I think it’s such a big responsibility, Dana,” Melissa had said in her mystical undertone, her eyes shimmering with fervor. “You’re there for someone at their most vulnerable — ”

“She said forensic pathology, not proctology,” Bill had interrupted, sending Charlie into gales of braying laughter quickly silenced by a Captain Scully glare.

When the dead speak, forensic pathologists listen. That had been Dr. Nielsen’s motto in medical school, and because of her Scully had learned to listen to the dead. Their wounds were words she could decipher, their scars symptoms she could diagnose. She had learned in medical school to treat the dead with respect — with reverence, even, for the stories they left behind. 

The autopsy bay is her sterile, sacred sanctuary. She takes pride in her work, in her neat stitches and careful composition, in her understanding that a body represents a life. She is acutely aware that the dead trust her to tell their stories.

Donnie Pfaster has violated that trust, has desecrated the rituals she revered. When she closes her eyes in the vehicle she sees his leering face, his arms reaching for her as if she were already no more than a dead thing to be handled.

She wants only a hot shower and soft, clean pajamas, but as the motel comes into view she realizes with a hot, sinking shame that her bag must be in the trunk of the rental car Pfaster ran off the road. Her mind hums with panic — surely she can’t ask Mulder to deliver a replacement wardrobe at this time of night — until Mulder clears his throat in the backseat, his voice soft against her ear.

“We recovered your bag from the rental car,” he says. It isn’t the first time she wonders if he knows what she is thinking.

* * *

They spend their lives in motels. It’s tradition for Mulder to knock loudly on her door and invite her to go for a run, or for a donut at the local diner, or for a walk in the rural moonlight to study the night sky for evidence of paranormal activity. It’s tradition for her to refuse politely, to roll her eyes, to shut the door with half a grimace and half a smirk. It’s tradition for her to crave being alone. 

But tonight when Mulder accompanies her to the door he hesitates on the threshold, like a vampire who hasn’t been invited inside. In a previous life, she thinks, he would already be making himself at home, lounging on her bed without even the courtesy of removing his dress shoes, helping himself to the tiny bottles of lotion in the bathroom. In a previous life she wouldn’t have cried all over his expensive trenchcoat. In a previous life she wouldn’t have been kidnapped at all. 

“Can I get you anything?” Mulder says. “I can see if there’s a vending machine, or a diner that’s still open…” He shifts uncomfortably in the doorway and the motel room yawns terrifyingly before her, its dark corners and grim shadows a dark echo of Pfaster’s makeshift morgue.

_There’s no way out, girly girl._

She swallows, her throat raw and dry. _He will not think less of you_ , she tells herself firmly, trying to conjure up Karen Kosseff’s gentle voice in her mind. _He does not think less of you._ She opens the door so that the night floods in.

“I’d like to take a shower,” she says, hearing her voice fade in and out like static on a radio. “Would you mind if...could you just…” She swallows. “Could you...sit here while I do?”

The angles in his face collapse into something like understanding. “Of course,” he says, and he steps inside and switches on the light.

* * *

In medical school she luxuriated in bathtubs filled with warm, soapy water and fragrant bath oils, an indulgence that might have seemed frivolous had she not rationalized it as an exercise in self-care: “Physician, bathe thyself,” her roommate would command after a particularly trying day. Scully would sink beneath the bubbles and marvel at the intricacies of the human body: her skin shriveling at the tips of her fingers and toes, her nails growing soft and pliable in the warm water. 

Now the X-Files have ruined baths for Scully. First there was Eugene Victor Tooms, handcuffed to her bathtub and hissing in her direction like a caged animal deprived of its prey. Now, Donnie Pfaster and his cadaver spa. 

She wants to linger beneath the hot water in the shower, but the dripping water sounds too ominously like the tub Donnie Pfaster planned to be her tomb. She reaches for the faucet, jerking the handle toward H. She wants the water to be scalding, wants to see the steam rise from her body as she scrubs her skin.

_It hurts because you lived_ , she tells herself. _It hurts because you’re alive to feel it._

* * *

She emerges from the bathroom in an oversized white robe. It looks thin and scratchy, nothing like the robes he is sure Scully has at home. He pictures her on the weekends wrapping herself in thick, soft bathrobes, trimming her nails into neat squares, her wet hair in a towel. 

They have spent enough nights next door to each other in hotels for him to know how much she values her small, practical grooming rituals: brushed teeth, washed hair, trimmed nails. He thinks about Pfaster’s victims, their sheared hair, their fingernails. A wave of nausea swells inside him. 

She raises one hand to switch off the bathroom light and he sees it on her wrist, an ugly red abrasion against her pale skin. Without conscious thought he is rising toward her, his fingers grazing the marks lightly. It is like tracing the condensation in a pane of glass.

“Scully,” he says before he can stop himself, “did he...did he…”

He can’t look up at her. He feels her withdraw her hand from beneath his, letting the robe fall over her bruised wrist, and when he dares to meet her eyes she shakes her head.

“There was a tub,” she says, “filled with cold water. He asked me if my hair was normal or dry. I pushed him into the water, and I ran. I sprayed him in the eyes with cleaning solution I found in the closet. He grabbed me and we went down the stairs. That’s when you came in.” 

She glances away from him, and he knows she is seeing what he saw: the struggle for the gun, Scully and Pfaster clawing at each other. The way her body reared beneath his, fighting for her life. 

She can’t know what he also saw in that moment: her body in the ICU, artificially still. The way her eyes had been taped shut, and how he couldn’t remember what they looked like when they glared at him.

She steps toward her suitcase and he instinctively turns his back to her for privacy. It feels strangely intimate: the small hotel room, the sounds of zippers and clothes unfolding, his own deep breaths. He is concentrating hard on a rip in the hotel wallpaper when he hears her voice in a near whisper.

“I saw something,” she says, her words dropping into the chasm of silence that hangs between them. “When he...when I looked at him. For a split second. I saw...as if he were a demon instead of a man. I froze. That’s how he got the gun.”

She swallows. She expects him to begin theorizing: maybe Pfaster was an incubus, a possessed soul. Maybe Pfaster looked inhuman because he was. She is grateful that she can’t see his face.

“It’s not uncommon for victims to envision their tormenters as demons or monsters as a coping mechanism that allows them to fight back,” he says slowly. “A monster is easier to kill than a man.” He pauses. “I don’t doubt what you saw, Scully. You saw him for what he is. But he isn’t superhuman. You would have beaten him. I’m confident of that.”

He clears his throat and hesitantly turns around. Scully is sitting on the bed in her pajamas looking down at her hands. 

“Maybe you have too much confidence in me,” she murmurs. When she looks up, her eyes are red but dry. 

“I was distracted,” she says. “I was disturbed. I let the case get to me.”

He sits down on the foot of the bed, holding her gaze. “You didn’t _let_ anything get to you,” he says. “Anyone would have been disturbed. It was disturbing, Scully. I told you as much.”

“But you…” She looks away again, letting the comparison go unspoken. _But you weren’t disturbed._ She hears him let out a long breath. 

“When I worked for Violent Crimes,” he says finally, “I saw the worst of humanity.” 

She looks back toward him, curious despite herself. She’d hoped to learn from him, when she was first assigned to the X-Files, but one of the earliest lessons she’d absorbed was that Mulder did not care to talk about his time with Violent Crimes. She thinks of what it took to understand Donnie Pfaster — a man capable of committing _one of the most angry and dehumanizing murders imaginable_ , she’d written in her report — and she understands why.

“I saw so much depravity it was easy to lose sight of humanity altogether,” he continues. “But you…” He gives her a small, sad smile. “You never lose sight of it, Scully. It’s what makes you such a fine agent. It’s what makes you...” 

His voice trails off. All at once she feels raw and scratchy, as if Pfaster has scraped away her insides. _It’s what makes you what Mulder needs you to be_ , she thinks. She closes her eyes briefly and feels Mulder’s hand on hers, soft and warm, and she imagines she can feel his pulse thrumming through his fingers. 

“I’ll let you get some sleep,” he says softly. He pulls his hand away from hers with some reluctance, moves to get to his feet. He is looking at her closely, and Scully wonders what he sees. A partner he can rely on? Or a victim who needs rescuing?

His eyes are luminous in the fluorescent hotel light. “I could stay here,” he says carefully. “Until you fall asleep.”

What will it be like to lie alone in this bed in the dark? The inside of Donnie Pfaster’s closet. A coffin. She thinks of Karen Kosseff’s gentle voice, of Pfaster’s leering hands grasping for her. 

_It hurts because you’re alive_ , she tells herself again, and she takes a deep breath. She has been lying alone in dark rooms all her life.

“I’ll be fine,” she says steadily.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for nita for the 2020 angst fanfic exchange!
> 
> I took the title from the classic Emily Dickinson poem "Because I could not stop for Death":
> 
> Because I could not stop for Death –  
> He kindly stopped for me –  
> The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
> And Immortality.
> 
> We slowly drove – He knew no haste  
> And I had put away  
> My labor and my leisure too,  
> For His Civility –
> 
> We passed the School, where Children strove  
> At Recess – in the Ring –  
> We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –  
> We passed the Setting Sun –
> 
> Or rather – He passed Us –  
> The Dews drew quivering and Chill –  
> For only Gossamer, my Gown –  
> My Tippet – only Tulle –
> 
> We paused before a House that seemed  
> A Swelling of the Ground –  
> The Roof was scarcely visible –  
> The Cornice – in the Ground –
> 
> Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet  
> Feels shorter than the Day  
> I first surmised the Horses' Heads  
> Were toward Eternity –


End file.
